From its request by a dark stranger to its gruelling creation on the composer’s deathbed, Mozart’s Requiem is a piece haunted by mysteries. It’s also an awe-inspiring contemplation of life’s profoundest questions, conveyed through music of enormous courage and compassion, beauty and power.

Mozart Requiem

Usher Hall

City Halls

With the death of Benjamin Britten on December 4, 1976, the music world lost one of the most important composers of the 20th century. Only shortly before his passing had the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt gained "an impression of the rare purity of his music." Overwhelmed by the "magnitude of such a loss," Pärt wrote his Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten in 1977 as a homage to the deceased artist, but also as a meditation on death. The bell tone at the end of the six-minute work fades into a tense silence, out of which the opening bars of Mozart's Requiem emerge. It remained unfinished after his death on December 5, 1791, thus making him a myth. Mozart: lux æterna.

Mozart Requiem on Mozart's death anniversary

Mozarteum Foundation

Jusqu’ici, il fallait bien croire Hector Berlioz, qui affirmait avoir détruit cette messe composée à 21 ans, jouée pour la première fois à l’église Saint-Roch. Mais en 1992, par le plus grand hasard, un instituteur en retrouva un manuscrit à Anvers. On allait alors découvrir, dans cette partition généreuse, les signes avant-coureurs du révolutionnaire et les traces des futurs Requiem, Symphonie fantastique et autre Benvenuto Cellini. De vingt ans postérieure, la Troisième Symphonie de Louise Farrenc résume un artisanat et une science des proportions qui lui valurent l’admiration de Schumann… et de Berlioz.

Julien Henric

Events

Upcoming events

Jul 2, 2026

Berlioz, Messe solennelle / Dinis Sousa · Orchestre National de France

Past events

Apr 30 - May 1, 2026

Mozart Requiem · Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Apr 30, 2026

Mozart Requiem · Usher Hall

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in Requiem by Mozart

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Singer in Symphony No. 3 by Farrenc

Orchestre National de France

Singer in Missa in tempore belli by Haydn

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Singer in Solemn Mass by Berlioz

Orchestre National de France

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